Transcription
I don't know how we're going to live up to our last episode, to be honest. Yeah, it was good. I mean, I could try and do an impersonation of Adam or something. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you're handsome enough or funny enough. Yeah. I don't look like Mr. Beast enough. No, it'll be like the teu version of Adam. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Um, we're of course referring to our last episode where we had a special guest on. First time we ever had a guest, Adam Falner. Um, it was fun actually. I enjoyed it. Um, it was an hour long episode, which is a bumper episode for us. And it felt like we could have stayed on for 2 hours. Whether anyone would have listened to 2 hours is another thing, but yeah, I think it was all killer, no filler, so you don't mind going on for an hour when it's all good stuff. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. No, it was it was it was really good. And you're right, Jamie. It's it's it's weird just being us two again now, which is silly cuz that's how we've done them the every other episode, but also at least we don't have to navigate the tech issues that we encountered with three people on the pod, which kind of turned everything into carnage. It did. We we aren't the kind of people that are are kind of built for that kind of stuff to be honest. It we'd kind of just turn up and hope for the best and then fix. Remember when we did that LinkedIn live and then LinkedIn live that wasn't realized like 3 minutes before that LinkedIn doesn't have like its own native streaming software and that we needed something like Riverside or Reream or something to be able to do it. That was fun. So instead we did an impromptu Google meet with about eight people which actually was really good. Yeah, it was fine, wasn't it? It worked out right. Um just style it out I think. And that's one of the messages I think from Adam as well. And it's actually going to be one of the messages in today's podcast. Okay. Nice. Wonderful. What a good seg. Hey. Hey. That was good, wasn't it? It was almost like we scripted it. Yeah.
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Okay. Look, let's make this a good one. Let's make it short. Let's make it snappy. What are we going to talk about today? So, um, as listeners will already know, we're going to talk about, um, how to style out a mistake that you've sent in an email. So, that's probably not what you'll title it, Jamie. I don't know if that's clickbaity enough for you, and I know that you love the word must uh, in your titles, and I didn't manage to include it there. Um, but it's going to be about, you know, we at some point, whether you've done this in a newsletter or whether it's just an email to a colleague or a client or or whatever, you've definitely made a mistake in an email and sends it. Even if you don't know that you've made a mistake, you definitely have made a mistake, I'm afraid to tell you. And of course, the problem with email is that unlike a blog or a social media post, we can't just delete it or edit it once it's been published. It's out into the ether forever. And we're then faced with a with with a a problem of okay, do we do we send a follow-up email? Do we just ignore it and hope that people don't realize what's the best play? What should you be including in a follow-up email if that's the route you decide to take? And that's what we're going to be covering on today's episode. Okay, nice. Yeah, we'll workshop the title for this episode a little bit. Um, I do like a must. Yes, they call me Elon Mus. Only because you're musty. You have a must to you. Oh, okay. Is that what it is? Okay, fine. Um, okay. And email is really unique in that sense, right? Even if we went back to like before email and you sent a letter to someone, you still have a chance that you could probably chase that letter down before it gets or like intercept the postman. When it comes to emails, like there's no chance. Like, what are you going to do? The the only thing I can think of now is you desperately trying to intercept the postman, which like let's do a separate podcast about your tactics around how you might do that. Yeah. I don't even know. You know, it's illegal. It's illegal right to mess around with post. Yes. Does that count if it's your own letter? Oh, you mean if you intercept it before it arrives at the the thing that you um Yeah. I don't know. I don't know, Joe. I'm not I'm not okay with the legal nuances of uh the Royal Mail, but um Okay. Uh yeah, but you are okay with the the nuances of of how to recover from making a mistake in a in a newsletter. Another top segue there. Um okay, so let's paint a scenario then. Um a scenario which we've found ourselves in, you know, here at the inbox club. um not recently I would say, but uh you send you write a newsletter and you create a firstname merge tag and so you want the email to open with hey and whatever the first name of the recipient is. uh and you mess that merge tag up and it either has the same name for everyone or you know it it's basically not worked correctly and it's made you look foolish or at least you feel foolish having sent it. Yeah. You know so what talk me through the seven stages of grief when it comes to uh dealing with that scenario. Yeah, it definitely starts with the heart palpitations when you it's it's the same feeling I would say and again most listeners will be able to relate to this. Um and and this is not a professional feeling. This is a a person this is a feeling that you get in your personal life when you send a text to someone that you're not meant to and it's about that person, right? So um or or you know or you just send like you know you're texting someone and you like accidentally send it to your dad or something, you know, like I remember I remember when he did that. I meant to send it to you. So embarrassing. I was just I was left hanging. I was like, "Okay, there's no reply coming." Meanwhile, Simon's getting a text. Pork chop getting the DMs. That's the nickname we came up on this podcast for James' dad is pork chop. Yeah, that's a call back to the Die Hard fans. He doesn't um listen, does he? No. No. Um along with most of the world. Yeah. Um so yeah. So, so you you you have that kind of like pit of the stomach feeling like, oh god, what have I just done? You know, like this has gone out to however many people. And again, like this feeling will be relatable whether you you're sending a newsletter to, you know, tens of thousands of people, a couple of hundred or people or just one email to someone who who, you know, like shouldn't have seen what you've you've just sent. And so, you know, I I think the the feeling of dread doesn't scale with the number of recipients. there is just a kind of there is a feeling of dread and it's inevitable regardless of how big your list is. Um so uh yeah, you know the the example that you just used Jamie is one that actually happened to us. It was over a year ago now. It's it's quite embarrassing um on the face of it because we are an email marketing agency. Um mistakes are the most human thing in the world though. And so I guess the moral of the story here is we're not going to tell you how to avoid mistakes in the first place. And Jamie, maybe one day we'll do an episode about proofing your email and and the various software you can use to ensure this happens as infrequently as possible. That sounds thrilling. Um I know that really Yeah, look out for that one. Um instead, we're going to talk to you about uh like we said, how to how to style out. Um, and I think that's the key thing, you know, as as an email marketing agency. There's nothing you It's almost a practice of stoicism here. Um, you know, there's a lot of mindfulness lessons to be learned uh in email marketing because of the finality of email because of the fact it's been sent and there's nothing you can do about it. You you you have to you have to find some resolve and you have to kind of tell yourself, okay, what's done is done. There is no changing the past. all I can do now is is what's best in in the present and for the future. And so that's what we did for for for this particular client. It was on behalf of a client. It wasn't one of our own projects, which you know makes it all the worse. Um the question then became, okay, this is done. It it's that it's happened, but it has happened. What is the where is the opportunity here? And the word opportunity is important and it'll come up again in this podcast. Where is the opportunity? How can we turn this into a win? And so Jamie, you and I gravitated towards h humor. I nearly said it. Norfolk then. Humor. Humor. Um, we gravitated to humor in order to and that kind of that was consistent with the the tone of the the newsletters we were sending on behalf of this client. Anyway, and so in this particular instance, I'd called everyone James uh in the in the email. Um, and I sent a follow-up about half an hour later that said, um, something along the lines of, you know, um, oh, there's a good chance that you're probably not called James. If you do happen to be called James, then please ignore this apology email. Um, and importantly, I then added a bit of extra bonus value into that apology uh, news uh, that apology email as well. So, I made the apology like I wasn't groing or anything like that. I think there's a tendency to really overexaggerate the error. Like most people just don't care. And wouldn't it be great if people cared so much about your newsletters that they felt like offended at an error? Um the reality is I think first and foremost companies have a tendency to really overestimate how important people consider their emails. And so they think, "Oh my god, this is catastrophic." And actually like remember that most people are just going about their day and they probably didn't notice. and if they did, like it's not the sort of thing that's going to bother them beyond like a second. Um, and so, you know, don't don't um don't send a follow-up email that's like super grolly. Keep it light and and offer some extra value. Turn it into like a bonus. Be like, by the way, like, you know, as by means of of, you know, to show you how sorry I am, here's here's this extra piece of content or this free thing that I wasn't going to give away and I am now. And the remarkable thing is, Jamie, is that in every apology email that we've ever sent, whether it's our own projects or on behalf of a client, luckily the client ones are very infrequent, um, we we've had the the biggest open rates, the biggest click rates, the biggest response, the most positive response. Yeah, I mean, that's it seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? But, um, it's it's so true in almost every instance um, if not every instance. Uh for us it's it's resulted and people cuz people like it. It's like you know why you drive slowly past a car crash. You know it's people like that kind of thing. It's like oh okay these guys are human that you know it is it comes across as more authentic and actually I would wager that those apology emails that you send afterwards or at least those rec I don't want to use apology email maybe like the recovery email that you send afterwards. I would hazard a guess that that email shows the most humanity that you've ever shown in any of your email marketing. Yes. Um and there's something around that I think that that would lead that to perform better. Um yeah, it forces you it forces you to show personality because you are acknowledging a a fault. So you are you're you're in quite a vulnerable state when you're sending those. And of course, you don't want to come, like I've said, you don't want to come across as like too I think it's generally a mistake, depending on the error that you've made. It's generally a mistake to be like too earnest about this sort of thing cuz like I say, it it it comes off as self a grandisement, like people really care about your emails, which they they just don't. Yeah. Um, but you're still vulnerable and you know you still you're still owning a mistake in front of you know potentially thousands of people and people tend to love that. The other thing of course Jamie is that you know we we generally steer away from subject line hacking but you get an email that says we need to apologize dot dot dot and see how many you know and and see whether you can resist opening that like everyone's opening that email right even if they haven't opened the first email and that's the funny thing is that what happens is that once you send a recovery email you then see the open rate of the original email go up cuz people want the reference point they're like oh what was the mistake you Yeah, I want to go and find it. And and this this leads I know this is something that you mentioned. We actually talked about what we were going to talk about in this episode before we pressed record, which is unusual for us. Yeah. Um but something that you that you did mention was um you know, okay, we have just acknowledged the fact that uh sending a recovery email does get really high engagement and that it also impacts the engagement of the original email. So the question that we have to then ask ourselves here if the goal for us is to get high email engagement, should we be doing this stuff on purpose? I would make a an argument that yes, you kind of just spoilered my hot take, but I think it's it's worth discuss it's worth discussing in the in the in the meat of the episode because yeah, um I think there's a compelling argument that if you're an email marketer, if you're the person responsible for email marketing at your company, um you should uh you should factor in you should you should schedule an intentional mistake email once a year. Now, this is quite uh controversial, I suppose. And I think it's important to stress that the mistake I'm referring to here is something fun like calling everyone by the same name or um you know we've seen uh mistakes used as a marketing ploy as well like when I think it was McDonald's uh leaked their new sandwich in like a an app um push notification that was like test like chicken mayo um and everyone was like oh my god I've just been sent this leak and it turned out it was completely intentional and like got the the most impressions their marketing campaign has ever had through the app or whatever it was. Yeah. Um so um I would say tread carefully in this department. It's um you know we have to be careful. One side of this coin Jamie that we haven't discussed yet is like a serious mistake. For example, if you accidentally email a list of people that haven't given you permission to email them or if you quite a famous one is um if you've opted out for say Mother's Day communications and then you receive an email about Mother's Day, you know, so where permissions and preferences are concerned, the mistakes can suddenly become quite serious and you can data breaches are possible and there's there's all kinds of things that can go wrong. um your follow-up email obviously needs to be very very different if you've done something that could genuinely upset someone or compromise their data or or any of that serious stuff. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think what we need to do then is match the match the gravity of our response with the gravity of the mistake. Um and you know cuz like you say you said at the start we have this um this habit as human beings to catastrophize. How am I saying that right? catastrophize. Is that right? Yeah. Catastrophize. Catastrophize. Yeah. Yeah. Um when actually no, like you said, no one cares. If it's just like a first name mishap or, you know, a spelling mistake in the subject line or a link doesn't work. Okay. It's not that it's not the end of the world. No one's died. Um and actually now you've got a great opportunity to follow up and get more engagement. But when it's more serious, I think you we have to like take that breath. And sometimes when I've made a mistake with, you know, in a newsletter or something, I've gone to James and said, "James, how should I handle this?" Because he's someone that's detached from the situation. He's not the one that's made the mistake. And so he he can make a very or come up with a very leveled response to how we we should handle that situation, you know, so you could rely on a on a third party to help you there. Um, but yeah, I think match match the gravity of your response with the gravity of the of the mistake. Yeah, I think that's a a really lovely way of putting it. And yeah, you know, again to hark back to um the stoicism point, like nothing can be changed once it's done. And I think like you you're so right to say like go to someone else in your company. Um it's a horrible moment to have to say, "Look, I've I've messed up." Um but go to someone else in your company. and you you would be amazed at how having that outsider perspective can really contextualize the gravity of the the error that you've made. Um and usually it's it's not nearly as serious as as you might fear it is. Um but yeah, going back to what we were saying, um with the intentional mistake email, look, the the facts are that mistake emails are if it's a light mistake and can be responded to with a light follow-up email. Um it's probably going to be your most opened email of the year, it's going to be your biggest opportunity to um express yourself and express your brand's personality and have some fun with it. um it it almost acts as a re-engagement campaign because the subject line you choose will be opened by more people and and they're likely to go back to the email that you made the mistake on. And so it's a way of spotlighting the the stuff that you were sending in the original email as well. It's a way of regaining subscribers that maybe have lapsed or ignored your emails up until this point. Um uh a and finally uh in the follow-up email itself, we can include another CTA. So let's say for example, it is a broken link. Well, now we're able to shine a spotlight only on that fixed link and say, here's the actual link. Here's your 10% off discount. Sorry, it's working now. Or, you know, here's the uh jacuzzi we're selling that's now 50% off. uh you know, it's it's an amazing way of generating um extra eyes on whatever it is that you're you're you're trying to push. Um it doesn't need to be a broken link. You know, it can just be here's this free resource that we didn't give away in the last email, but we're going to here as you know, as a as a way of kind of squaring things off with you. Um and and yeah, you get incredible engagement rates. Why not? If you're an email marketer, this these are the sorts of targets that you need to be hitting, right? This is this is exactly what you want. This is what you dream of. these one-off campaigns that that you know are going to get excellent engagement, why not? Why not schedule it in? As long as it doesn't make the company look disorganized or disheveled or, you know, completely like they've lost the plot. I think once a year, by the time you you you do um you know, you do your one in 2025, people have forgotten the one from last year. Yeah, I like that. I think Yeah, we don't want to milk it and start doing these every week cuz then you just look stupid. Um okay, nice. I I do want to go back to the more serious one because I think I would like to just talk about how do we how do you handle a more serious error because if we say like the mother's day or or father's day one for example which is a famous example you know we accidentally send a mother's day promotional email to someone who's opted out to receive a mother's day mother's day emails like what do you do then do you like send a follow-up and say sorry we forgot you don't have a mom uh you know like how do you like handle that situation cuz like do we just keep digging a hole there? Like what what Yeah, I think what's important is that you you don't treat it as the opportunity that you would treat a light follow-up email. So, I think I would absolutely encourage marketers to be opportunistic in a normal follow-up. I think the worst thing you can do is be opportunistic in an instance like that. So, your follow Yes, I think you should send a follow-up email first and foremost. There are some mistakes where perhaps a follow-up email isn't required and actually can can worsen the situation. I I would say that something like sending to a list that um shouldn't have received an email in the first place uh is not one of those situations. I think that's serious enough that they deserve a follow-up email. Absolutely do not sell anything. Um, I think just be sincere, be honest, um, apologize and, you know, I suppose just be as human as you possibly can. I I would say this is a principle that we talk about a lot on this podcast. you know, um, talk to an audience of one and and it's, uh, particularly for something important and kind of sentimental like the example that you gave Jamie. I think it's particularly important that you are talking to an audience of one and, you know, almost imagine as though you're sat across a table from them like what are the sorts of things that you might say? Uh, you you you know, you're not going to say sorry, sorry, you don't have a mom. You're going to you're going to say that you shouldn't have received that email. you know, I I made a huge mistake. Um, I also think using the first person can be quite pertinent here as well. Um, businesses um will lean towards saying we. Um, and I understand that sometimes, you know, if it's a junior in your company who's sending the the the the mistake in the first instance, there might be a temptation to deflect away from that person and to make it more about a companywide error. Uh, which is fair enough. But I think there is you know if we are ultimately trying to remind the person through our apology that we are a human then speaking from the corporate voice just doesn't do that and I think it comes across in the wrong way. So I think even if you are sending a follow-up email on behalf of a intern at your company or or whoever it might have been who made the error in the first place you know say um I'm the CEO here. This comes down to me. It shouldn't have happened. Um, don't offer them a discount as an apology. Don't say, "Here's here's 10% off your next order. It's just going to look opportunistic." Leave it at that and and then move on, Jam. That's really important. Move on. You cannot impact what's happened with email. There there are no takeback seies. Um, you just have to move on. And uh and and I I promise you, as with everything, time is is is the best healer. You know, people people do forget. People do forget about this stuff. And like I said, like even with something as serious as that, like you know, if your jeans brand sent you a Mother's Day email by mistake, that might be uh incredibly distressing for some people, but like it's probably it, you know, it's probably not going to ruin their their their entire year, you know, like um they'll move on. You need to as well. Cool. Okay. Nice. Um, yeah. I think when I was first using Mailchimp, um, maybe like 10 years ago or something, I remember before you sent a campaign, I'm pretty sure this isn't the case now, uh, otherwise I've just revealed how little client work I do and leave it to the rest of you and the team. When you send a campaign, there used to be like the the Mailchimp monkey finger that would like hover over a big red button and like shake and it was like, "Are you sure you want to send?" And I just think that's why it's so unhelpful because you already have these like feelings of um like trepidation over sending a campaign because you know you can't take it back. And to add that little image in there was uh I thought was funny and unhelpful. Yeah, there's actually there's actually a term that's been coined for that called send anxiety which is is like a very real thing for email marketers. Um, fortunately I don't really suffer for it. Although, you know, you might argue unfortunately cuz I have made the occasional error. Um, as we all have, you're going to make the errors about it. You know, you're going to make the errors whether you feel anxious before or after before or not. You know, it's it's going to happen. It's just how you deal with it. Yeah. Um, okay, cool. So, um, I think that kind of covers what I what I wanted to talk about and what you wanted to talk about. Should we do a quick hot take? Uh, yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, you had yours pre-loaded, so do you want to go first? I had mine, but I'm not going to use it cuz we've already talked about it. It was it was about the fact that um marketers should intentionally send them should mate should include them in their uh content calendar. I will instead say my hot take will be subscribe to the inbox club's newsletter because you will almost certainly get an apology email in the next couple of months. Okay. And it will be a great demonstration of how to do it. Okay. Right. One, I write the newsletter. So, are you saying that I'm going to make a statement or are you saying that we're going to schedule a mistake? Uh, no, no, no. Um, what I was trying to insult you. Oh, okay. Right. Fine, fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, okay. Okay. My hot take is you're a Uh eight out of 10. Yeah. Oh yeah. Uh yeah. No, your hot take if you if you'd have stuck with your original hot take, which was scheduling um a mistake email, I would have given you eight out of 10 for your hot take. Um but because I spoiled spoiled it by bringing it up in the main body of this episode, you've had to resort to using a maybe like a three out of a 10 hot take. Yeah. Yeah. Um I don't know. Do I have a hot take? Um, I think you should schedule a mistake email once a year. Uh, no. I don't have one, so I'm not going to make one up. Um, no, no, no, that's okay. I think we we did we we did cover it um quite comprehensively in the podcast itself. Uh, one thing I would say is that when uh, you made a mistake on one of our newsletters, Jamie, the inbox club's newsletter, your follow-up mistake, your follow-up email was how to do a follow-up email, uh, which which was genius. Yeah. Not that I'm trying to put hot takes into your mouth by any means. Um but I would say I would just really want to reiterate the the opportunity that this gives you if you're a little bit creative, if you're able to take that step back, give it a little bit of time, let your your heartbeat settle and uh think where's the opportunity here? And it's um it's you know like I again I I haven't looked at the stats. I would assume that that follow-up email that you sent is is was probably one of the most wellreceived. I remember getting replies from it being like you guys must have done this on purpose. This is great. Um and uh you know that that is that is the power of it. You actually get replies sometimes from a good followup email. I think you might have helped me write that email or at least possibly or at least come up with a strategy. I can't remember. I think it was definitely your idea. Hey, we're one and the same, Jamie. Yeah, the inbox club's idea. True. Thanks, B. Okay, I think that does us uh for today. Sorry there was no um guest. Sorry we had a cheap lookalike Adam Faulner today in James. Uh hopefully you found this episode interesting. Uh give us five stars if you're living on living. If you're listening on Spotify, uh like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. Over and out. Over and out. Cheers, guys. See you next week. Bye.
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